Tuesday, May 22, 2012

These magic moments aka "the small hours" credit to Rob Thomas

Particularly upbeat this morning. The scale flashed 271.8, nearly ten pounds down since I started two weeks ago. The jumps at the beginning are always larger. It will get much harder as the pounds continue to come off and the weeks roll by. I know my motivation will flag. I will have days of weight gain or no change which will be hard to take especially if I am following my diet. And being the creature of the Now that I am, recent data looms large in my psyche. It's killed entire seasons of cycling. That would be tragic if I believed in constancy. But I don't. Don't get me wrong I think it's admirable, and I'll need to use it if I want to reach this goal. But what I believe is that life is lived for a series of moments. Mind you, the moments cannot be made, only experienced for the fleeting seconds that they survive. I've never understood the outsized celebrations following a championship; be it the World Cup, Super Bowl, Tour de France victory, whatever... They seem to represent the constancy of near-perfection. Phooey! The execution in the heat of battle is the pinnacle of achievement. Everything that follows is self-indulgent whether for personal satisfaction or monetary gain. Give me the choice between a moment in a head's up sprint where the outcome has yet to be decided versus a moment on the top step of the podium, and I'll take the sprint every time. Hell, make it a moment of an interval four months before the race, and I'll take that too. Given that frame of mind, this will be a long, hard slog. It is these moments that will get me through.